Measurement of jet fragmentation in Pb+Pb collisions at \(\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 2.76\) TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Abstract

The distributions of transverse momentum and longitudinal momentum fraction of charged particles in jets are measured in Pb+Pb and pp collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The distributions are measured as a function of jet transverse momentum and rapidity. The analysis utilises an integrated luminosity of 0.14 nb\(^{-1}\) of Pb+Pb data and 4.0 pb\(^{-1}\) of pp data collected in 2011 and 2013, respectively, at the same centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per colliding nucleon pair. The distributions measured in pp collisions are used as a reference for those measured in Pb+Pb collisions in order to evaluate the impact on the internal structure of jets from the jet energy loss of fast partons propagating through the hot, dense medium created in heavy-ion collisions. Modest but significant centrality-dependent modifications of fragmentation functions in Pb+Pb collisions with respect to those in pp collisions are seen. No significant dependence of modifications on jet \(p_{\mathrm{T}}\) and rapidity selections is observed except for the fragments with the highest transverse momenta for which some reduction of yields is observed for more forward jets.